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You have run several surveys with fixed team or department names, and now those teams have been renamed. You can rewrite the name retroactively — no data and no historical comparability is lost. In the product, an Attribute (such as “Department”) holds a list of Options (such as “HR” or “Sales”). It is the options you rename.
Renaming attributes and options requires the Admin role.

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Example 1: renaming existing options

Your last surveys were run with these options: HR, IT, Sales and Support. To keep using those results under new names, go to Employees and open Attribute Management. Screenshot 2025-11-05 at 11.36.52 Find the attribute you want to change and select Edit. A dialog opens in which you can rename the options. Click the pencil icon on the right of an option and edit it. The result looks like this: The charts of surveys you have already run now show the new option names: Because charts are sorted alphabetically, they may now appear in a different order. The results themselves are identical. You can then run an employee upload as usual with the new names and compare results historically.
Update the new name in your HR system, CSV file or API integration as well. Imports match options by name: if your source still sends the old name, the next import creates the old option again and splits the group in two.
The old name is replaced everywhere, including in surveys that closed years ago. There is no historical “as of” label — that is exactly what keeps the data comparable.

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Example 2: merging teams or departments

During a restructure, several teams or departments are sometimes merged into one new unit. Merging is not possible in the product. Historical data is tied to a specific team or department and cannot be transferred automatically into a new unit. Renaming one option to match another is also rejected, because option names have to be unique within an attribute. There are still ways to keep your analysis comparable. Get in touch with your contact at Honestly and we will look at the options for your data together.

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Example 3: restructuring

When a team is split into several new teams or departments with new names, historical data cannot be assigned to the new structures automatically. Comparison therefore starts with the new employee upload and the next survey cycle.
  • Historical comparisons are only possible if all the new teams or departments are evaluated together with the original one
  • That keeps the data consistent and developments over time remain traceable
  • Comparing an individual new team against historical values is not possible, because the old data cannot be unambiguously assigned to the new structures
If you need a more detailed analysis, we recommend defining a consistent mapping of the new teams to the previous structures internally, or using alternative comparison methods.